Staff and patients have been hit by a sickness bug at Walsall Manor Hospital with some sufferers left ill for six weeks.Those affected were unwell for such a long period because the sickness and diarrhoea infection mutated from its usual form into a more aggressive strain, medical experts said today.
Laboratory tests revealed 70 per cent of cases at the hospital were suffering from the new type of bug and 30 per cent were suffering from the more familiar infection.
Medicine used to treat the usual strain was found to have the opposite effect on the mutated infection and actually encouraged it to develop.
It was only when screening tests were carried out that the difference between the two strains was made clear and treatment could be tailored to attack the evolved bug.
Chief executive Sue James said: “The number of new cases has been going down steadily.”
The infection struck people down in June and has affected staff and patients throughout the summer but has now all but been wiped out at the Moat Road site.
As well as this infection, a total of 20 patients picked up the MRSA superbug from the site between March 2005 and April this year.
Medical director Mike Browne said the hospital had made addressing infection one of its top three priorities for this financial year.
Mr Browne encouraged all visitors, staff and patients to use the alcohol wash provided at the entrance to wards and other departments.
While it could not kill the new strain of sickness and diarrhoea, it would attack many other germs, he said.
Mr Browne said: “As fast as we get on top of one strain, it evolves and creates another. The risk of infection is going to be key in the next four or five years, but we will plough a lot of people’s time and a lot of resources into fighting hospital-acquired infection.”
By Lyndsey Hunt
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